Barbeu-Dubourg: Memorandum for the American Commissioners, [before 9 January? 1777]

Barbeu-Dubourg: Memorandum for the American Commissioners

AD: American Philosophical Society

This memorandum is the first account of the negotiations over tobacco that had been going on before Franklin’s arrival, and that were expected to play a crucial part in financing the war. No other American export was in such demand in France; if military supplies were to be traded for commodities, the only commodity available was tobacco. The committee of secret correspondence, writing to Deane the previous October, had expected to deal with the farmers general;7 and a contract with them remained one of the commissioners’ major aims. The farm was a syndicate of financiers, one of the most elaborate and efficient bureaucracies of the ancien régime, that was responsible for collecting taxes on goods and for administering the state monopolies of salt and tobacco.8For the latter the farmers paid the government twenty-four million livres a year, and the maximum sale price was fixed; the syndicate therefore had to have a sufficient supply or face bankruptcy. When it discovered that it could not obtain what it needed from Britain, it started looking for American sources, among them the commissioners.

British firms had hitherto controlled the bulk of the trade: their agents had bought the crop in the Chesapeake area, and their ships had carried it to France. Now that the war had eliminated these middlemen, a direct commerce in tobacco promised to be enormously lucrative; and French and American entrepreneurs jostled for a share of it. Some of the Frenchmen, such as Barbeu-Dubourg, hoped to substitute connections for resources; others, such as Chaumont in particular, had better connections and far greater resources. American merchant houses and consortia, like Willing & Morris and Alsop & Company, hoped to do business both for themselves and for Congress. The farmers initially negotiated with the commissioners, with the secret committee through Thomas Morris, and with Dubourg; and the negotiations came to nothing. The main problem was transport. The crop could not be shipped in American vessels; they were too few, and British cruisers too prevalent. The commissioners had a ready answer: send French ships for it. The farmers refused; they were as well aware as the Americans that such a move would stir the hornets’ nest in London, and that Versailles was not yet ready to risk war. The protracted negotiations were consequently unrealistic,9 and the commissioners’ idea that tobacco might finance the war was a pipe dream.

1. The date when the commissioners opened their negotiations with the farmers general. We assume that Dubourg submitted his memorandum before that, to bring the Americans up to date on what had already happened.

2. Jacques Paulze (1721–1994), Lavoisier’s father-in-law, had been a farmer since 1768 and was currently the director of the tobacco department.

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